The Name Game
by elphabaoftheopera
Summary: "Stop calling me that! That isn't who I am!" "Then who are you?" She didn't have an answer for that. Neither did he. When he wants to fight and she doesn't, and they have no one but each other for company, the pair must learn how to communicate with each other before they both lose their identities for good. Post-Musical. Fiyeraba. One-shot.
"Elphaba would you _listen_ to me!?"

"That's not my name."

There was always a fight. But it was better than the alternative. The _silence_. He had realized early on, the battle was better than the muteness.

"Would you stop with that shit?! _Elphaba_."

"That's _not my name_ stop calling me that. It's _not my name_. I don't _have_ one."

The yelling, aching chest, grief, desperation, and tireless frustration was a breath of fresh air compared to the stillness. Fighting was better than _nothing_. That's why the two of them fought so often. He thought that, having lost sense of physical touch, conceding to feeling nothing but numbness was not an alternative. He may have lost touch, but the fighting was validation that he hadn't lost feeling.

"Well what am I supposed to call you, then?" he argued.

She only scoffed. "I don't want to fight," she muttered.

"Well I do, I _do_ want to fight."

"Well I _don't_!"

"If one of us wants to fight then we _fight_ that's how relationships work!"

She laughed harshly, as she often did. A cackle of amusement and mirth, but never of joy or true whimsy. Usually out of bitterness.

"Is that what you think this is?"

"You're full of shit, Elphaba."

"Stop _calling_ me that."

"You're full of it, _Elphaba_."

"Stop-"

"Elphaba. Elphaba. Elphaba! _ELPHABA_!"

In a whirlwind akin to a cyclone she stood up and whipped around. Her back had been to him the whole time, she had been seated on the faded and tattered sofa in the room they shared at a shabby little inn far from Oz. Peeling striped wallpaper, dusty mirrors covered by sheets, threadbare rugs caked with dust. She usually never stirred, only sitting with her back to him, staring at the wall or a book. Tapping her foot. Tapping her foot.

Sometimes he worried she was so sedentary because she was malnourished or fatigued, but somehow he felt like there were no physical limits that she could not endure and she wasn't subject to physical hardships such as hunger and exhaustion as much as other people would be. However, while she could endure twice as much physical toll as an average person, her heart was so bruised that she felt grief double what any person should.

Yet she stood, and she whipped around, and he saw her face for the first time that day. Her eyes slightly unfocused, her eyes challenging and mocking him. Excellent.

"It's not _Elphaba_! I'm not _Elphaba_!"

She spat the word like it was foreign on her tongue.

"Then who _are_ you!?"

She stopped at that, apparently derailed from whatever jab she had locked and loaded. She didn't have an answer. Neither did he. It wasn't a question either of them had anticipated, so they both stood there silently, seeing if the answer would fall into their laps. It didn't.

She put her hands on her hips and pressed her lips together, her eyes, which had been slightly off center, cast to the ground.

"I don't like to fight," she insisted, her voice hoarse from the previous yelling.

"Well it seems like the only time you ever talk to me is _when_ we fight. So…" he muttered.

"Yes, well, sometimes feeling nothing is better than being _unnecessarily sentimental_."

"Elphaba would _never_ have believed that," he said. She looked up at this, but her eyes stayed off center. Unfocused. Looking just slightly to the left of him.

"Elphaba once told me that it was better to feel _everything_ than feel _nothing_."

A silence stretched between him and her. Her eyes didn't dart away, they didn't even blink, but he still couldn't catch her gaze. Not completely.

"Maybe that's why she died," she muttered.

A _second_ silence stretched between him and her. Her eyes shifted slightly, but was now looking slightly, just _slightly_ to the right of him. Her eyes were fixated to the point where it looked like she certainly could be looking at him, but there was a disconnect. There always was.

"I have two questions for you," he said finally. "That's a lie, I have countless questions, but I'll stick with two very selfish questions if you'll answer them honestly." Her gaze did not change, she didn't say anything, but there was an almost imperceptible shift in her eyebrows that seemed to offer consent for him to continue.

"Why won't you look at me?" he said quietly, looking into her unfocused eyes.

"I am looking at you," she snapped quietly.

"No you're not. You're looking right here. I'm in your peripheral vision but you aren't looking at me. You can't look at me. You never do."

"I'm _looking_ at you-"

"Is it because of this?" he hissed, pulling some straw from his wrists and flinging them on the ground to her feet. She flinched. "Is it because of _this_?" he said, pressing his straw filled gloves against the burlap sack which made up his face.

"No-"

"Is it because you can't stand to look at my face!?"

"No!"

"Is it because you find me so repulsive that you can't bear to even set _eyes_ on me!?" he threw a little more straw at her and she covered her face with her slender fingers, shielding her eyes.

"How could you even suggest-"

"Do you know how that _feels_!? I feel like if _anyone_ knows how it feels _you_ would!"

She darted past him and headed to the pathetic kitchen area they shared with the flickering light and the empty bowl on the counter. She went and pressed both of her hands into the counter, bowing her head so she didn't have to look anymore.

He advanced, standing behind her, trying to get her to look at him.

" _Look_ at me!" he yelled pleadingly, his burlap gloved hands outstretched to her although her back was turned. He could see the bones of her spine even through her thin dress.

"Look at me! Elphaba, _look_ at me!"

" _Why_ do you keep saying that name!?" she yelled, her voice thick with grief.

"Because you won't say _mine_!" he yelled, his rough gloves moving to clutch at his straw filled chest. "You won't say my name! _Why_!? Why won't you call me by my _name_!?"

"I _do_ -"

"You _haven't_! Not since I was changed! You haven't called me by my name and you won't let me call you by yours, _why_!?"

"Stop!"

"What's my _name_!?"

"Listen-"

"WHAT IS MY NAME, ELPHABA!?"

" _FIYERO_!"

Finally, in a flurry, she turned to face Fiyero. They stood facing each other as she leaned back against the counter, her hands still gripping it for support. Fiyero softened as he looked at her, a huge weight being lifted from his chest at the revelation. That was right, that was his name. He had almost forgotten it. He found relief in the validation that came with the name he had suspected was his coming from the lips of another. Still, even still, her eyes were cast just slightly downwards.

"Fiyero," she repeated softly, taking deep breaths to calm herself it seemed.

Fiyero watched her, watched the state she was in. Almost panicked, quite literally cornered, and flustered. Chipped away at, defensive still, but considerably less so. It was like he found a chink in her armor and she was trying to locate it and plug it up tight so it wouldn't happen again.

"Elphaba…"

"No…" she sighed, shaking her head and closing her eyes. "You are Fiyero, I am not Elphaba. I might have been once and I'm sorry if she's who you want, but I can't be her again. But you _are_ Fiyero…and I'm sorry for letting you forget."

"If I am Fiyero, then look at me," Fiyero murmured. She bit her lip, and kept her eyes shut. For once, Fiyero didn't want to fight. Fighting, even if it made him feel something, never got them anywhere.

"Maybe I'm not…maybe I'm _not_ Fiyero…" he said slowly, trying to pick it apart in his mind. It felt wrong, to hear his name, to have her speak it, but still not being acknowledged or looked at. It felt wrong to be a Fiyero without an Elphaba.

"Maybe not like this. Not if you can't look at me. You used to look at me, you used to _see_ me. The man I was. Even when _no one else_ saw me, saw who I was, _you_ saw me. If you don't see me anymore…maybe I'm not Fiyero. Or maybe I don't want to be. If you're not Elphaba, I don't want to be Fiyero."

She was silent. The silence was always the worst. Never preferable to the yelling the fuss the cursing. The silence was where the uncertainty lived. But for once, the silence wasn't broken by words. The tension, the stretch between them was broken by a slight lift of the eyes. Fiyero watched as she opened her eyes and slowly, tentatively, looked up. Looked up at him, met his eyes, _saw_ him. Wordlessly and hesitantly, but nevertheless. She was looking at him.

"It's not you, _Fiyero_ ," she whispered, her soft words melting between them and easing them out of that dreaded, quiet purgatory. "It's not the straw. It's not the burlap. I have never and _could_ never find you repulsive," she said calmly. She swallowed and took a deep breath. Never in Fiyero's life had he seen her cry, or even on the verge, and while she still had perfectly dry eyes this seemed to be as close as he had ever gotten to witnessing it.

"When I look at you I see what I have taken away from you. I see the life I stole from you, the humanity I stripped. I am _crushed_ by guilt," she whispered, her eyes locked with his. "It's not fair for me to have the privilege to call you Fiyero, to treat you as the man I know you are, when I took that from you. I _took_ that from you."

Fiyero took it in, took in her words. It was hard for him to understand them, understand her point of view.

"If you hadn't done what you did, I would be dead. You gave me more time, a second chance to be with you. Is this how you want to spend it? I may not look like him but it's still me, I'm still him. Fiyero. _Your_ Fiyero."

She seemed rattled at this and shook her head. "No, no. Not _my_ Fiyero. I cannot take ownership of-"

"I'm giving myself to you freely. I know what I'm doing. I still want to be the boy in the clearing with the Lion cub, I still want to be the man who ran away with you, the scarecrow who still _loves_ you despite everything."

"It's _foolish_ to use words such as love," she insisted through a lump in her throat.

"I've always been foolish," Fiyero insisted. There was something that changed in her eye, she did not smile or chuckle or acknowledge his sentiment, but there was some tiny glimmer in her eye at that.

"I don't know how to be her again…" she mumbled, as if she was trying to work it out for herself. "I'm not…whole. I don't know if I am even a woman, a human, if I even have a soul."

" _Nonsense_ ," Fiyero muttered in a hushed tone, taking a step closer to her and placing his gloved hands on either side of her waist. She stiffened at the sudden touch and held her breath, but kept her gaze on his as promised. "The night we shared together in the forest. The night you let me kiss you, touch you, _love_ you. That night we lay together on the ground and you let yourself be so free and unapologetic and passionate. You cannot share that with me and tell me you are not a woman, you are not human, and you do not have a soul. You are still her, that hasn't changed. Even if I only had that one night to touch you, I'm willing to live on only memories of your flesh if you still give me your _thoughts_. If you still give me your time, your company, your words, your attention, your mind, your love…if you still give me your _name_."

Her lips were slightly parted as she listened to Fiyero's words and declarations. It seemed so simple, didn't it? His conditions were few. He was asking for nothing when he had given her the world. Maybe she had been wrong all along about where humanity is found. She had been so terrified that she had stolen his humanity, but he still had the same heart. Perhaps, _perhaps_ , upon his insistence, she was the same underneath as well.

She didn't say anything final, leaving Fiyero a riddle to decode on her face as she always did, but the silence that stretched between them finally seemed less suffocating. Fiyero placed both of his flimsy hands on her shoulders and looked at her. _Saw_ her.

"Elphaba?" he murmured quietly, not necessarily with anything in mind to say, but gently calling for her to return to him.

To which Elphaba responded, "Yes, Fiyero?"


End file.
